


Strong at the Broken Places

by oddegg



Series: Sanguine series [1]
Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Dark, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-30
Updated: 2010-03-30
Packaged: 2017-10-08 13:01:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/75898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oddegg/pseuds/oddegg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes we look for redemption in strange ways…</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strong at the Broken Places

**Author's Note:**

> Originally done for rounds_of_kink on livejournal, when zanzou_chan asked for: Harry/Draco, destructive relationship.
> 
> I had a song in mind writing this – 'Misguided Angel' by Cowboy Junkies. Just throwing that out there.
> 
> The title is from Hemingway – 'A Farewell to Arms'. _'The world breaks everyone and afterwards many are strong at the broken places.'_

It took Draco five months to visit his father’s grave.

 

Part of that time he honestly hadn’t been able to come. On the run with Severus, then in hiding from other Death Eaters with his mother; sheltered in a safe house by the Order of the Pheonix.

He had had all the time in the world to think about things while he was stuck in the house. Watching other’s risk themselves – his godfather included. He had weeks to think of nothing but his life, his family, his place in the world.

He had thought a lot about his father.

 

Once he was allowed to join in the fight, once he was – well, not trusted, not that. Never that, even after they knew…

Once he was _tolerated_, he had been too busy to come to the graveyard, too tired and sore from days and weeks spent tracking round the country, skirmishing in alley-ways, fighting this battle on the side that _he_ had chosen – not his father.

Too tired from other things as well, and that was another reason he hadn’t come here before. Too confused at first, and then too caught up. But not too ashamed. Never that. Despite everything, he had never felt a glimmer of shame over this.

 

He still didn’t know how to tell his father though, and he stood silently for a long time before the almost bare headstone, shivering slightly in the chill autumn wind that tugged at his cloak and ruffled his scarf so that it slipped down his neck and revealed the bruises there. Bruises that matched others on his wrists or hidden under his clothes. That showed up starkly on pallid pale skin along with other, more permanent marks.

 

In the end he raised his eyes (‘_hold your head up boy, Malfoy’s bow to no-one!’_ _‘yes Father’_) and, looking out over the tombstones, spoke his piece in a cool, dry tone his father would have been proud of – if it hadn’t been for the subject matter.

 

“Hullo Father. It’s been a very long time since I spoke to you. Mother would probably send her love if she knew I were coming here. If she wasn’t half crazy with grief because you went and got yourself killed following a madman!”

 

He bit his lip, holding in the bitter words he wanted to spew over his father’s bones, feeling the o-so-familiar-now taste of blood. This wasn’t about his father’s offense’s and crimes. This was about him.

 

Leaves blew around his feet, and he could almost see the shadows lengthen as he watched. The twilight crept in quickly in October, and he needed to be back soon. They – _He_ – would notice if Draco was gone for too long. Better to just spit it out. No point in lying to a dead man. Corpses can’t talk back.

 

“I’m sleeping with Potter, father. With Harry. I’m _fucking_ Harry Potter”

 

The truth didn’t sound so hard after all. Dropped easily from his tongue like a vague pleasantry given at one of his mother’s afternoon teas. And his father’s ghost didn’t immediately rise up to strike him down, rattling its chains.

 

But that wasn’t the whole truth was it? No, ‘the truth’ wasn’t as simple, as _clean_ as that, and it couldn’t be told to the whole graveyard, to all the ghouls that rested out there in their crypts. He crouched down, hands still in pockets fighting the cold. His eyes burned as he read the inscription – _‘Husband…Father…Died…’ – _his hand came out to trace the final line, cut deeper across the others in a different hand – _‘Traitor…’ _

His voice was a rasp when he spoke again, and usually he only hears that roughness in it when it’s been fucked into him – when he’s been used and worn out and his flesh has been abused in ways that he can’t imagine even his father was sinful enough to have come up with. And his father’s sins were long.

 

“It might not be what you would have wanted for my life, father – in fact I’m certain it’s not – but he gives me something I need. He does things for me –_to me,_ that… that you wouldn’t understand. That you’d kill him for if you were still alive.”

 

Draco stood up, ignored the sullen protest of aching muscles and strained tendons, far too used now to the jagged prickle of cloth pulling on freshly knitting skin to wince at the feel of it.

 

He looked down at the grave of the man he had worshipped for so many years.

“I would never have known this if you’d lived, father. I would have gone with you to the Dark Lord, despite anything Severus was able to do to try and save me, and I would never have had this. Never had Harry.”

 

“I’m glad you’re dead. I’m glad I let him kill you. I just wanted you to know.”

 

And then he turned and, with a sharp ‘CRACK!’ he was gone.

 

**

 

When he got back to the house – Apparating in the gloomy hallway and leaving his cloak there – he moved silently through the rooms of the ground floor to the kitchen and realized that no-one had noticed his absence.

The werewolf was in the study – dug into his shabby coat as he slept in a chair, deep lines of exhaustion on his face. Ron and Hermione, researching at the library table, didn’t even seem to notice him at the doorway. Though that was good in a way; he could easily go the rest of his life without having to watch Hermione try to act normal, see her brittle smile and the way she flinched when anyone come close to touching her. The way that Ron watched her always, pain so deep in his eyes that you just knew it would never leave him again.

 

Draco didn’t find _him_ anywhere. He obviously wasn’t back from the latest hunt.

 

When he got to the kitchen he found that his stomach twisted at even the thought of food. That wasn’t what he wanted.

 

He made his way slowly, silently up the stairs to the small room at the top of the house that he had claimed as his own. No-one else had wanted it.

 

**

 

The room was dark when he went in, but before he could turn the lamp on a low voice came out from the shadows

“Leave the light”

 

He had his back to the bed, where the voice had come from; was turned to one side with his hand reaching for the old-fashioned lamp on the wall but he froze immediately on hearing that tone, that voice. Harry’s voice.

Obedience to that voice was instinctive now.

 

His breath started coming in shallow pants already, and he could feel his muscles begin to tremble, fine tremors running along his nerve endings in response to the other man’s presence behind him. He heard the bed creak and boots make tiny scuffing noises on the bare wood floor and closed his eyes. Didn’t open them when he felt the warmth of another close along his back, the humid brush of breath against his cheek

“You went out of the house”

 

It was just a statement, and the tone was almost amused, but Draco could hear the infinitesimal flattening of vowels, the tiny click of teeth coming together at the end. Could smell the harsh firewhiskey on the other’s breath and a full shiver ran over his skin. Things could get… dangerous if Harry had been drinking.

 

“Where did you go?”

 

Draco’s throat was dry, and his voice cracked a little as he answered

“I w’ – I went to my fathers grave”

 

Harry continued like he hadn’t heard Draco’s answer – or like he didn’t care about it.

“I came back and I you weren’t here. And I thought it was understood that you were to stay in the house. There are a lot of people who want to harm you, you know. It’s not safe for you to disobey orders like that, Malfoy”

 

Harry never calls Draco by anything but his surname. And it’s not concern for him that’s darkening his voice.

 

Aggressive hands grabbed Draco’s shoulders and pushed him face-first against the door. A boot roughly kicked his feet apart to allow a leg to thrust between his thighs.

The voice is a purr now; cat playing with his prey.

“What would you do if someone had followed you? If someone had seen you and trailed you back here? Tagged along when you Apparated? If they were here waiting in your room, wanting to hurt you?”

 

Draco’s voice was choked when he spoke

“I… I could make a noise – they’d hear me downstairs if, if…”

 

“If you shouted? If you cried out? But you’re a long way from anyone up here Malfoy; way up here in the attic with the rest of the broken, useless, forgotten things. And even if they did hear you, why do you think they’d care?”

 

The tone was almost intrigued, cruelly amused. Harry leaned in closer and whispered close to Draco’s ear

“Do you really think anyone down there would be concerned about what was happening to you? And after all, all someone would have to do is say a simple spell – _‘prohibeo sonitus’ _– and now the room’s soundproofed. And you can yelp like the dog you are, you can scream till that pretty white throat’s raw and _no-one _will be able to hear”

 

Teeth bit down savagely on the web of muscle where his neck curves into his shoulder and Draco cried out sharply.

 

A hand in his hair, dragging his head and shoulders back, an arm pressed across the bottom of his ribs so that the bend is painful. Harry licked a broad stripe up his neck and hissed

“I am going to Make. You. Scream”

 

The weight pressing him into the door, the pressure on his diaphragm means that Draco can only catch his breath in little hitching pants, and his air is cut off even further when Harry twists his head round and seals Draco’s mouth with his own, kissing him hard, all teeth and tongue, gnawing at Draco’s lip till it bleeds.

Harry likes blood. Likes kisses that colour his teeth iron-red.

 

Just when his vision was starting to go dark Harry pulled off him and spun him around. Draco leant trembling against the door as the other man took a couple of steps back.

 

Harry ran his tongue over stained lips and stood with his hands loosely clenching and unclenching by his sides, just staring at Draco for a long moment before saying softly

“Strip”

 

Draco didn’t hesitate, but his hands were shaking so much that he fumbled with the buttons on his shirt – silver-grey silk, suitable for a graveside, it’s crispness crumpled now. He only managed to get two of them through their holes before Harry snarled and wrenched his hands away. He slapped Draco once, hard across the face, before  grasping the sides of the shirt and just ripping. He dragged his nails down Draco’s chest then stepped back again and said through clenched teeth

“Faster. Then get on your knees”

 

Draco tore his clothes off quickly, not caring how clumsy he looked doing it. He fell to his knees with a thump and didn’t even need to be told before he put his arms behind his back, gripping his own wrists tightly. He knew he wouldn’t be allowed to touch – not yet.

 

He didn’t raise his head but he could feel Harry’s eyes on him, and knew what he must look like; long narrow body with lean muscle, pale skin showing the signs of other nights like this. Bruises whose different fading colours mark him off like a calendar, bite marks and scratches, deeper cuts that weren’t made by teeth or nails. Cock hard against his stomach, red and weeping.

 

There’s a faint sound of cloth moving and Harry’s t-shirt drops to the floor. Then the agonizingly drawn-out sound of a zipper being pulled down, so slow and deliberate that Draco can practically hear each bit of metal as it unclips from the next. 

 

Then a wait that seems so long Draco nearly sobbed before Harry’s boots were there in front of his knees and his head was being pulled up by his hair again till he was looking up the length of Harry’s body, past that beautiful cock and the bare, strong muscled chest to those bright, feral green eyes.

 

He opened his mouth – didn’t need to be told that either – and slid his lips down the long length of Harry’s cock, swallowing him deep, making him wet.

 

Draco wished he could do this slower, like Harry let him sometimes, twirl his tongue around the base, flicker the tip against the sensitive chord that links the shaft and head, graze his teeth so lightly across the downy soft skin. But that’s not going to happen tonight, he knew. Tonight it’s just about hollowing his cheeks and making sure he doesn’t gag when the thick length hits the back of his throat, letting his mouth be just a wet hole for Harry to fuck.

 

He was pumping his own hips in time with Harry’s, knew by the faint tremble he could feel in the thighs hitting his chest that the other man was close, and knew that he wouldn’t even have to touch himself once he felt that thick, hot liquid spurt down his throat.

 

But then Harry was pulling away and pulling Draco up, fingers digging into his biceps hard enough to leave more bruises. He was hauled over to the bed and thrown down onto it, and he hadn’t time to draw breath before Harry was on him, yanking his arms up and gripping his wrists so tight he could feel the bones grind together.

 

Harsh, savage bites were being embossed into his skin and Harry was grinding their hips and cocks together so close and fast that the zip of his jeans was scratching and tearing at both of them. Then he stiffened above Draco and bore down so hard it _hurt_ – and he bent his head to clamp teeth over a nipple and Draco came and bent his back up so hard he thought it would snap.

 

**

 

Draco was panting on the bed now, naked and sweaty and splattered with cum from both of them. Harry had pushed himself away from the bed as soon as the last shudder from his own orgasm had passed and was now standing looking down, his breathing a harsh sound in the still room, and his chest heaving. His jeans were pushed slightly down his hips but were still clinging there, and he still had his boots on.

 

Draco pulled feebly at the covers, starting to drag them up for warmth in the chilly air but Harry’s hiss stopped him.

 

He was motionless. Frozen as he watched Harry reach behind his back and pull out the knife he’s had concealed there throughout their encounter.

The blade shines dully in the faint light coming through the curtains, and Draco felt a sobbing moan rising in his throat when he saw the same edged gleam in Harry’s eyes.

 

Then his lover – this angel-hearted demon who brings him so much pleasure and so much pain – cocked his head and the moonlight shone off his glasses. Draco couldn’t see behind those blank, polished circles as the question was asked

 

“You didn’t think I was finished with you, did you?”

 

And part of his heart broke away as he realized this is going to be a very long night. He didn’t know if he could survive it. He didn’t know if he cared.


End file.
